A small rule for footnotes
If a footnote would make sense read aloud in the middle of the sentence, it is not a footnote.
A rule I try to follow: a footnote should be something a careful reader could skip without losing the thread, but would be glad to have found.1 If it would make sense read aloud mid-sentence, it belongs in the sentence.
On the web this matters more, because a footnote at the bottom of a long page is a long way from the sentence that needed it. Sidenotes fix the distance; discipline fixes the rest.
Footnotes
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Like this one, which you could have skipped. ↩